On Fri, Jan 29, 1999 at 02:14:04PM -0600, Paul Prescod wrote:
I didn't mean to step on your toes nor say anything for or against any proposal that you may have made regarding this issue. I've seen only half of this conversation and out-of-order. If the question is "how do I make DTML XML compliant" my answer is "use XSL-style templates." By the way you disparge XML in your message, I presume that XML compliance is *not* your current problem, but that leaves me rather confused about the subject line.
Since you used to be on the Zope list, I had assumed you caught the whole conversation... it goes something like this. Someone asks why there isn't some neat GUI. Someone proposes Netscape/et al. Someone complains that using comments for DTML (<!--#var -->) makes it nearly impossible to use said tools. I do a tiny bit of looking, and propsose to modify the syntax to look more like XML, and also like PHP (which also uses the PI construct), never proposing that it's XML, just "XML-like"... also this will perhaps start to get people aclimated to typing <?ztml ?> rather than the existing one. Anyway, somehow that got copied to the XML list, trying to see if it was wellformed... it's not, nor valid, I know that, understood it from the start. It wasn't my intention to make well-formed nor valid XML. well, anyway, someone proposed an option that would translate to well-formed XML... (I forget the name, now, damned emailer), which comes to something like this, which si what I'm looking at now: <?ztml store("var name")?> Note that this is used for non-immediate insertion into the data-stream, and perhaps more accurately fits the use intended for PI elements. That shoves it into a "register" which can be later accessed using: &ztml; As an identity construct. This eeems to meet all the concerns except that it isn't XSL... but it's not meant ot be XSL, just an ultra-lightweight way to get 99% of the job done. You can then use it so: <A HREF="&ztml;/FolderishTHingHere"> which, according to what I read in the XML spec is totally acceptable :-) Now I'd like to be able to define a bunch of these things at the start of a template, but that's just too complex, I'm not sure that I like the results of &ztml0; &ztml1; etc., which create the effective result of single letter variables ... evil evil evil. Mkae sense now? Plus I needed to write this down for my own edification and education, so I understand what it is I'm trying to do :-) Chris -- | Christopher Petrilli | petrilli@amber.org